Lyle Borst, 89, Nuclear Physicist Who Worked on A-Bomb Project

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

Published: August 12, 2002

Dr. Lyle B. Borst, a nuclear physicist who helped build Brookhaven National Laboratory's nuclear reactor and was an early member of the Manhattan Project, died on July 30 at his home in Williamsville, N.Y. He was 89.

In 1950, Dr. Borst led the construction of the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor, which was the largest and most powerful reactor in the country and the first to be built solely for research and other peacetime uses of atomic energy.

Within the first nine months of operating the reactor, Dr. Borst announced that it had produced a new type of radioactive iodine, which is used in treating thyroid cancer.

In 1952, based on studies of new types of atomic nuclei created in the reactor, Dr. Borst helped explain the mystery behind giant stars, known as supernovae, that burst with the energy of billions of atomic bombs and flare for several years with the brilliance of several million suns.

Dr. Borst found that beryllium 7, an isotope of beryllium that does not occur naturally on earth, is formed in supernovae by the fusion of two helium nuclei. The fusion takes place after the star has used up its hydrogen supply. This reaction absorbs huge quantities of energy, causing the star to collapse in the greatest cosmic explosion known.

Dr. Borst was also a senior physicist at the Clinton Laboratories in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where he worked on the Manhattan Project.

After atomic bombs were dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Dr. Borst, concerned that atomic energy should be internationally regulated, helped organize a group of about 1,300 scientists who had worked on the bomb project and wanted to keep atomic energy under civilian control, rather than military control, to prevent a worldwide competitive armaments race.

Speaking in support of an atomic energy control bill in front of Congress in 1945, Dr. Borst said he helped start the Federation of Atomic Scientists ''to create a realization of the dangers that this nation and all civilization will face if the tremendous destructive potential of nuclear energy is misused.''

On a trip to Greece in 1961, Dr. Borst discovered that a ''Manhattan District Project'' in Sparta made steel in large quantities as early as 650 B.C.

Based on specimens he obtained from archaeologists, he theorized that steel was the secret weapon of the Spartans and that it was the reason for their military successes against enemies having only soft iron or bronze weapons. Having such a weapon at that time, Dr. Borst said in a 1961 article in The New York Times, was almost the military equivalent of having an atomic bomb.

Born in Chicago on Nov. 24, 1912, Lyle Benjamin Borst earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Illinois and a doctorate at the University of Chicago.

In 1942, Dr. Borst was a research associate at the metallurgical laboratory in Chicago, where Dr. Enrico Fermi conducted the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

He became a professor of physics at the University of Utah in the early 50's and helped design the university's small nuclear reactor. Dr. Borst taught at New York University and the State University of New York at Buffalo, and was a member of the National Board of the American Civil Liberties Union.

He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Ruth Barbara Mayer Borst; two sons, John Benjamin, of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Stephen, of North Brookfield, Mass.; a daughter, Frances Elizabeth Wright of Albany; and seven grandchildren.